This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

Mending a frayed past

In an excerpt from "'67: The Maple Leafs, Their Sensational Victory, And The End Of An Empire," authors Damien Cox and Gord Stellick examine the roots of a frosty relationship between Dave Keon and his former team.

Sat., Feb. 17, 2007

Tonight, as the Maple Leafs honour the last Toronto team to win the Stanley Cup, all eyes at the Air Canada Centre will be on Dave Keon, whose play with that 1967 team earned him playoff MVP honours. He left the team in 1975 after a contract battle with Harold Ballard and has steadfastly kept his distance from the club that he captained for six years. "The Toronto Maple Leafs are a distant memory, and not a good one," said Keon in 1997. In an excerpt from '67: The Maple Leafs, Their Sensational Victory, And The End Of An Empire, authors Damien Cox and Gord Stellick examine the roots of a frosty relationship that is only now beginning to thaw.

Dave Keon's bitter estrangement from the team he joined as a 16-year-old in 1956 came mostly in the wake of the '67 Cup triumph, and was fuelled by a variety of events that followed the success of that year. Philosophically, however, it was rooted in earlier years when he began to believe the Leafs had abandoned the principles, standards and traditions that had made the franchise great.

He had come through the St. Mike's system, and took great pride in the Catholic school as a reflection of his belief in the single-minded dedication it took to be a Leaf. He was moody and intense, and when the Leafs shipped out two of his contemporaries, Dick Duff and Bob Nevin, in a 1964 deal with the New York Rangers, he saw it in classic religious terms, a betrayal of basic and fundamental beliefs that underpinned the entire organization. He believed in the Smythe tradition, saw honour in the way that Conn Smythe had developed the organization and featured men like Syl Apps and Ted Kennedy. To Keon, Ron Ellis was the last of the true Leafs, a player developed and sculpted in the Marlboro junior organization and the last product of the old sponsorship system. New York Yankee star Joe DiMaggio had been his hero, entrancing young Keon with his professionalism, class and, above all, his sense of dignity.

Keon wasn't picked on by Punch Imlach like Frank Mahovlich or Mike Walton, but he felt disrespected by management after being named MVP of the playoffs in 1967. Early on he detected the sickness within the organization as Harold Ballard gradually assumed control, and that awareness stoked the fires of his growing disenchantment. His personal life was difficult; one of his five children, a son named Richard, died at eight months of age. In the early 1970s, his marriage dissolved; it was a tortuous process for him, as a devout Catholic. He was enraged when Gardens executives maintained connections with his former wife and his children as though it were a form of betrayal. Finally, in 1975, after 15 terrific seasons as a Leaf and six as team captain, he left to join the WHA's Fighting Saints, a team coached by an old junior hockey opponent, Harry Neale. Keon had played only briefly in the minors, four games for Sudbury of the Eastern Pro League, and had maintained a high standard of quality over his 1,062-game Leaf career, accumulating only 75 penalty minutes over that time along with four Stanley Cup rings, a Calder Trophy, a Conn Smythe Trophy and two Lady Byng Trophies. He always played with class and skill, competing like a demon but behaving like a gentleman at all times.

Article Continued Below

He left for $300,000 over two years, more money than the Leafs wanted to pay, or perhaps more money than Harold Ballard could afford with the hockey club leveraged to the hilt. At age 35, Keon also wanted the security of a no-trade contract, and Ballard wouldn't budge on that, either, although hockey people believe Keon still had three or four good years to give the Leafs if they had kept him. Other NHL teams inquired about his availability, but while Ballard wouldn't give Keon a no-trade deal, he wasn't prepared to deal him either. Two years earlier, Bernie Parent had bolted the Leafs for the WHA, and the Leafs had traded his rights to Philly for draft picks and netminder Doug Favell. By 1975, Parent was the best goalie in hockey, so when the New York Islanders came calling about Keon, Ballard demanded a first-round pick.

With no place else to go and no contract from the Leafs, Keon left for the Fighting Saints. It was easy to see how the accumulation of indignities, real and perceived, had driven the proud Keon away. His hurt was deeper, more personal perhaps, than that of Mahovlich or Walton, his skilful, high-strung teammates on the '67 championship team.

"I left the Leafs because I had a disagreement over a business matter," said Keon in 2003. "That's all I'm prepared to say." That said, there is a sense among old colleagues that Keon would like to find his way back, but doesn't quite know how. His son, Dave Jr., became a fixture at Leaf games as an off-ice crew supervisor at the Air Canada Centre. After an estrangement of several years in the 1990s, the two men, father and son, repaired their differences and grew closer. The spitting image of his father, Keon Jr. is often announced as the goal judge before games, while his father remains distanced from the organization despite direct appeals from senior Leaf officials.

At the same time, Keon has tried to repair old relationships. Bobby Haggert, the trainer on the '67 Leafs, recalled that when his wife died in 2001, he was surprised to pick up the phone and hear Keon's voice at the other end. "I don't even know how he got my number," said Haggert. "I hadn't talked to him in 20 years. But it meant the world to me."

To Haggert, Keon was the "best of them all," the quintessential Leaf. "I think he got bad advice, that he listened to the wrong people and that hurt him in his professional life and to a degree in his personal life," says Haggert. "They convinced him to stand up to Harold Ballard rather than working at crafting a successful deal. You're not going to win a game of brinksmanship with Ballard." Keon actually did return to the Gardens for an oldtimers exhibition game in the early 1990s when Don Giffin was briefly in charge of the team, but the reconciliation didn't last. "After that, I figured out the ownership was no different than Ballard and I had no use for it," he said.

As of 2004, the reasons why Keon still refused to return to the Leaf fold are highly personal and varied. But in an interview for this book, Keon emphasized that he was appalled by the manner in which the Leafs decided to acknowledge players of the past in the mid-1990s by "honouring" their numbers, but not retiring them. Only two players in Leaf history, Bill Barilko and Ace Bailey, had ever had their numbers retired. Barilko's No.5 was taken out of circulation after he disappeared in a 1951 plane crash, and Bailey's No.6 was eliminated from use after he was permanently disabled in a 1933 stick-swinging incident with Eddie Shore. Bailey did volunteer to let his number be worn by Ellis, a player he admired, during the 1970s.

During the 1990s, a series of players, from Johnny Bower to Mahovlich to Apps to Kennedy, had banners with their names and numbers raised to the rafters at Maple Leaf Gardens and later transferred to the Air Canada Centre. But the numbers themselves – Mahovlich's 27, Apps' 10 – stayed in circulation, often worn by mediocre players. Keon's No.14 wasn't similarly honoured, largely because he refused to participate in any special ceremonies. As he watched from a distance, one average player after another, from Stan Weir to Mike Kaszycki to Rob Cimetta to Dave Reid to Darby Hendrickson to Jonas Hoglund, donned the Leaf jersey he made famous. Dave Andreychuk, at least, restored some honour to the number with 120 goals in 223 regular season games from 1992 to 1996. By contrast, Jean Beliveau never had to watch any other player wear No.4 with the Montreal Canadiens.

Keon found the process of "honouring" numbers disgusting, particularly when it involved two of the Leaf captains who had preceded him, Apps and Kennedy. "I was embarrassed for them. I told Johnny (Bower) I thought it was embarrassing.

He said, `Well, Mr. (Conn) Smythe didn't retire numbers.' I told him Mr. Smythe wouldn't hold such an embarrassing ceremony. What does honouring a number mean? Johnny told me that's the way they do things," said Keon. "I told him it was pretty chickenshit way to do things. I'm embarrassed for them all. I confronted (Leaf president Ken) Dryden and said, `Do you think the Montreal Canadiens would just honour The Rocket's number?' He couldn't give me a good answer."

To Keon, the proud, sensitive and skilful artist on skates, the honour of being a Leaf meant everything. He considered being a Leaf a vocation as opposed to merely employment. He saw it all slipping away as early as 1964 with the Andy Bathgate trade and watched the process accelerate through the years, as the Smythe family gave way to Ballard. Once that honour and tradition was gone, the Leafs he had known were gone forever. He long remained the loose end that could never be tied up.

The Toronto Star and thestar.com, each property of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, One Yonge Street, 4th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5E 1E6. You can unsubscribe at any time. Please contact us or see our privacy policy for more information.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com